Common Cleaning Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Home

It’s time for a revelation: Not everything that you read on the internet is true.

With smartphones and Pinterest, cleaning enthusiasts can now type “how to deep clean leather” into a quick Google search and come up with an answer in less than five seconds. This is a great tool in theory, but the sad reality is that not all advice you read on the web is necessarily accurate. Just talk to all those people who followed one “helpful tip” that went viral and destroyed their cell phones by trying to charge them in the microwave (true story).

Bad cleaning advice is out there, and it’s important to ignore it or you could risk damaging your furniture and floors. Here are a few of the most common cleaning mistakes that people make due to bad advice or just because they don’t know any better.

1. Myth: You should make your bed every day

Making your bed causes more dust mites. | JZhuk/iStock/Getty Images

Lazy people of the world, rejoice! This is your excuse to stop making the bed. It may look neat and tidy, but a crisply made bed is actually a great place for dust mites to breed.

One study found that the average bed can hold up to 1.5 million dust mites. They thrive in a made bed but tend to decrease when that same bed is left unmade. The study says, “Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die.”